Learning - The 2017-18 Season So Far

The 2017-18 season so far has provided lots of learning opportunities for myself, from direct structured ones, to informal, more experienced based learning.

In this piece I aim to clearly outline my learning in all the different circumstances and then conclude with how this learning has been implemented into my coaching practice.

Masters Degree

In September, I started studying for a Masters Degree (Distance Learning) in Performance Coaching with the University of Stirling. This has been part time and I have been doing this in the morning before coaching starts in the afternoon (I am usually at work 12/1pm-8/9pm).

So far, I have studied three ‘modules’, completing one on ‘The Coaching Process’ and currently studying two more on ‘Coaching Concepts’ and ‘Performance Analysis’.

The course has been fantastic, with lots of learning opportunities presented on a frequent basis. One of the main things has been videoing myself coaching on several occasions, and then objectively analyzing different parts of the session and my behaviours. Examples of this include notating how many times I used different styles of interventions (Question and answer, command etc), the change in tempo/pitch of my voice, what body language I used and also how often I used praise/criticism. These simple studies allowed me to dissect my coaching and also understand what and how I coached, meaning I could assess myself vs other coaches and also vs myself in future sessions, giving myself tangible targets to hit (EG 5 times more praise than criticism, 3 times more question and answer interventions with children under 8 than command interventions).

A key experience within this mode of study so far has been discipline. Distance learning has forced me to be pro-active in following both the course content and completing the set tasks. If I personally do not discipline myself the course directors aren’t going to chase me, the onus is on myself to make it work. This has led me to pushing myself to develop my organizational and scheduling skills to a new level, in some cases organizing weeks ahead of time as to when I am going to do which piece of work and how, whilst also accounting for the unexpected variables which sometimes get in the way in daily life.

Overall, the masters experience so far has helped structure my life and create a learning pathway like no other I have previously encountered. I have implemented numerous things in my coaching, particularly via objective notational analysis of my true behaviours and modifying those for the desired outcome. One of the things I have recognized is how the usage of praise can almost become like background noise, as has some of my coaching ‘commentary’. Therefore, I now aim to speak less and try to pack more concise information into my interventions to create a more refined coaching approach.

New Zealand A Licence

After assessing my coach education options, I applied for several A Licence courses worldwide in September/October last year. The main difficulty with living and coaching in a relatively isolated country is accessing higher level coaching courses, an example being English FA structure their A Licence with 6 blocks of 3 days, which as an overseas coach is entirely unmanageable with flights and such. Therefore, I did some research, and I was delighted to receive an offer to study the New Zealand A Licence, who organize their course in 2 blocks (Part 1 – 12 days, part 2 – 8 days. To progress to part 2 you must complete part 1). This more manageable style of scheduling for an overseas coach alongside the world class coach education team New Zealand Football boasts (Headed up by Rob Sherman), it was an extremely exciting opportunity for myself to continue to develop as a coach.

Whilst it cost me a lot financially, the course has helped me extensively so far. In February 2018 I travelled to New Zealand from Cayman, taking 57 hours there and 31 back!

My first day on the course was interesting and there was a lot of information to take in. Most coaches within the room were based in New Zealand, and were clear on the NZF’s footballing language and session structure. For the 3 other overseas coaches and I it was slightly different, but this cultural difference was only of benefit to myself as I learned a new style of structure.

Rob Sherman led the first few days, alongside Steve Dillon, Korosh Monsef and Aaron MacFarlane supporting the coaches with their educating expertise. I learned a lot from all of them, with all adding areas of personal strength to the course.

The course content was mainly based around developing our personal playing vision and philosophy whilst also applying that to how we build our sessions, analyse game footage and also periodise our season plans. There were areas relating to communication and how we frame this communication for the best of our team, both as individual players, units and the whole group.

I learned a lot about structuring sessions and how and when to coach within them, whilst improving individual players within a team environment. Personally, I feel this would be the key thing I have taken home to practice upon, and I feel it positively affecting both my coaching but more so my personal relationships with players, as they see I am directly helping them improve as individual players as well as the team. This style of coaching, whilst not new to me, was made clearer and techniques for coaching both the individual and the team within a session were presented to me in ways I hadn’t yet explored.

The second main thing I learned was how to replicate the realism of the game within sessions. We started with the game and all exercises and practices worked backwards from there. This created a logical structure to solving the problem or issues your team may have, and told each individual player their role in solving this problem. I’ve really looked deeper into this and spent much more time planning sessions since I’ve returned due to this, and I hope it’s something my players can see.

For me, doing a coaching course in a foreign country (Foreign to myself!) opened up the avenues of not only learning new coaching content but also observing and learning a new coaching culture. I found a lot of the country to be extremely content heavy but also concise, which is something I had previously picked up from the Masters Degree, but to see it in action by some very good coaches allowed me to understand how the direct implementation of it can look. I found this culture of direct, to the point, concise coaching very helpful as I learned from others how to say the same thing but with less words and more so, less complications/room for confusion.

Overall, part 1 of the A Licence course in New Zealand was fantastic, and I have already started to work hard to develop myself within the distance learning assignments I have been set to progress to part 2.

Modern Soccer Coach Mentorship

In January I was selected to participate in the Modern Soccer Coach mentorship, organized by Gary Curneen. This a 6 month coaching mentorship whereby a coach is paired with a more experienced mentor, who then guides them through a 6 month development process, including frequent webinars and discussions.

I was paired with Nigel Adkins, current Hull City manager and previously Southampton, Sheffield United and Reading manager, to name but a few. With my ambitions to coach, and manage, at the highest levels, I was happy to get someone who has that experience as my mentor and through the conversations we have had, I further understand the demands and commitments required to reach this level.

Each month we skype/facetime our mentor and talk to them about the previous months tasks as set by Gary, and also other coaching challenges or difficulties presented in your coaching life.

My first conversation with Nigel was extremely interesting, as I probed and asked questions about how he creates the environment in a club within the first week of joining a new club. We also spoke about how to structure training sessions, weekly schedules and also performance vs winning. Nigel really pressed me the final part, as I consistently referred to results over performance, and it has had a real impact on the way I assess a game now. I am much calmer on the bench and provide information based around improving each individual’s performance during the match. If all the cogs start to work closer in unison, the quality of the team performance improves.

Nigel set me a task at the end of our last chat to really highlight and make me think about what I would do if I were to take over a club in the first week. The club would be a new build, created and founded the day before, and I would have to define values, playing styles and also recruit players and create the environment for them. Nigel’s question was what would this look like and why? I feel like this project will never truly be done as I continue learning, however it has certainly got me thinking. I am currently still working away on this project, as I find myself tweaking and changing things before progressing onto the next part frequently!

Alongside our communication with our mentor, we are included in several webinars and similar on a monthly basis. These revolve around numerous topics, with this last month’s topic being ‘communication’. We have had 2 webinars this month, of which I have made lots of notes and started to synthesise these notes into practice. One of the main things which was re-affirmed for me from the most recent webinar was having a frequent ‘coaching language’, to help the players understand your directions clearer. Example, instead of telling the defensive line to ‘step up’ or ‘press up’ or ‘push up’ the field, use just one term. This helps create a more structured and clear language for all players to understand and also leads to no confusion.

The MSC Mentorship has been a good journey so far, and only 2 months in I am proud to be a part of it and hope it continues to both develop me as a person and also develop my coaching for the positive in the long run.

Conclusion

To conclude, all 3 learning opportunities have helped me to develop as a coach in the last 6 months, and I am grateful for them. The main thing however, is then implementing the learning, which takes time and effort to do. I am careful to not try to throw everything I’ve learned in at once, and take it step by step, so as to improve and get each stage to a place I am comfortable before trying new things. By continually practicing new things I feel as though I keep myself uncomfortable in my coaching, which stretches me to find solutions and improve.

If you want to ask me about any of the experiences in this piece, please email me on jackbraz93@gmail.com and I will be happy to answer them.

I would recommend participating in everything above. The Masters has helped me learn a more academic approach to coaching and pedagogy, the NZ A Licence has given me a more applied understanding of coaching and long term planning whilst the Mentorship continually gives me small, but frequent, tasks to maintain my personal development. It’s been a positive 6 months!